Bringing the power of books to the fediverse - eviltoast

Hello everyone,

Books are still one of the most important sources of information we have as a human species. However, the media on which this information has been stored has changed considerably over time and with it its accessibility and influence on our society.

Nowadays you can find an enormous range of books and texts online. Most of the time, however, access to them is extremely fragmented, difficult to find, subject to a fee, incompatible with the software platform of your choice or, in the worst case, goes under with its provider over time.

To counteract this, annas-archive was founded to make the knowledge stored in the texts and books openly accessible and to preserve it for future generations. On the other hand, there are platforms such as Goodreads that aim to simplify the joy of reading and the exchange of information, as well as the review and discussion of books and texts.

Unfortunately, Goodreads is a centralized, proprietary solution that in addition also happens to be owned by Amazon. BookWyrm is a decentralized, open source alternative in the fediverse that steps in right here.

Now here’s the kicker: what if we combined the power of both platforms? What if we combined the enormous book database of annas-archive with the fediverse, i.e. BookWyrm? Annas archive could benefit from reviews and discussions about the books and BookWyrm could expand its still very limited database many times over.

From my point of view, this would be the perfect combination of two already great projects. What do you think?


TL:DR What do you think about combining annas-archive with the fediverse (BookWyrm)

  • simple@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    Isn’t Anna’s Library piracy? Bookwyrm is just a book tracker ala goodreads which only has metadata, providing links to free downloads of books is illegal and would put them under fire.

    If you want a legal alternative to what you’re describing, check out OpenLibrary. You can borrow books there and use it as a Goodreads alternative.

    • PropaGandalf@lemmy.worldOP
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      11 months ago

      Anna’s Archive is way more than just a redirection to sources where you can get the books for free. In that sense the content itself is hosted on different platforms like IPFS, through torrents or on zlibrary and AA is just a discovery, curatorial platform. But Thanks for the info about OpenLibrary!

      • Star@sopuli.xyz
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        11 months ago

        AA is just a discovery, curatorial platform.

        It isn’t just a discovery/search platform anymore. Source

        • PropaGandalf@lemmy.worldOP
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          11 months ago

          I see. Well personally I’m like the way it goes but I understand that many people don’t see it like that. Nevertheless it has a huge database we could profit from.